"What sort of work?"
"In the social direction. I take a great interest in the condition of the poor."
"Really?" exclaimed Lady Ogram. "What do you do?"
"We have a little society for extending civilisation among the ignorant and the neglected. Just now we are trying to teach them how to make use of the free library, to direct their choice of books. I must tell you that a favourite study of mine is Old English, and I'm sure it would be so good if our working classes could be brought to read Chaucer and Langland and Wycliffe and so on. One can't expect them to study foreign languages, but these old writers would serve them for a philological training, which has such an excellent effect on the mind. I know a family—shockingly poor living, four of them, in two rooms—who have promised me to give an hour every Sunday to 'Piers the Plowman'—I have made them a present of the little Clarendon Press edition, which has excellent notes. Presently, I shall set them a little examination paper—very simple, of course."
Miss Bride's countenance was a study of subdued expression. Lady Ogram—who probably had never heard of 'Piers the Plowman'—glanced inquiringly at her secretary, and seemed to suspend judgment.
"We, too, take a good deal of interest in that kind of thing," she remarked. "I see that we shall understand each other. Do your relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Rooke, work with you?"
"They haven't quite the same point of view," said Miss Tomalin, smiling indulgently. "I'm afraid they represent rather the old way of thinking about the poor—the common-sense way, they call it; it means, as far as I can see, not thinking much about the poor at all. Of course I try to make them understand that this is neglect of duty. We have no right whatever to live in enjoyment of our privileges and pay no heed to those less fortunate. Every educated person is really a missionary, whose duty it is to go forth and spread the light. I feel it so strongly that I could not, simply could not, be satisfied to pursue my own culture; it seems to me the worst kind of selfishness. The other day I went, on the business of our society, into a dreadfully poor home, where the people, I'm sure, often suffer from hunger. I couldn't give money—for one thing, I have very little, and then it's so demoralising, and one never knows whether the people will be offended—but I sat down and told the poor woman all about the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and you can't think how interested she was, and how grateful! It quite brightened the day for her. One felt one had done some good."
There was silence. Lady Ogram looked admiringly at the girl. If anyone else had talked to her in this way, no vehemence of language would have sufficed to express her scorn; but in May Tomalin such ideals seemed to her a very amiable trait. She was anxious to see everything May said or did in a favourable light.
"Have you tried the effect of music?" asked Constance, gravely, when Miss Tomalin chanced to regard her.
"Oh, we haven't forgotten that. Next winter we hope to give a few concerts in a schoolroom. Of course it must be really good music; we shan't have anything of a popular kind—at least, we shan't if my view prevails. It isn't our object to amuse people; it would be really humiliating to play and sing the kind of things the ignorant poor like. We want to train their intelligence. Some of our friends say it will be absurd to give them classical music, which will weary and discontent them. But they must be made to understand that their weariness and discontent is wrong. We have to show them how bad and poor their taste is, that they may strive to develop a higher and nobler. I, for one, shall utterly decline to have anything to do with the concerts if the programme doesn't consist exclusively of the really great, Bach and Beethoven and so on. Don't you agree with me?"